


It isn’t forever

by Remus_Lupins_Chocolate



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: I’d die for Fiona in any universe I love her, M/M, SnowBaz, dev and Niall are seen and implied to be together in one sentence, it isn’t that sad tho, sort of angst, sort of just neutral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remus_Lupins_Chocolate/pseuds/Remus_Lupins_Chocolate
Summary: In which Simon and Baz are at a New Years party Baz’s dad organised, and Simon wanders off while Fiona rants about Malcom and the old families. Simon’s feeling a little bit down, but, hey, it isn’t forever.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Kudos: 46





	It isn’t forever

I hate winter. It’s always so much colder than the rest of the year, even though in England we’re lucky when we have a reasonably warm summer. Right now, the reason I hate winter is that my father decided the best idea for his usual New Years ‘party’ all of the old families attend was to have an outdoor celebration. However expensive the jacket of my suit is, it is still doing nothing to keep me warm on the last night of fucking December.

Wellbelove and Bunce have disappeared somewhere with a few of Bunce’s cousins, and so I’ve been left with Fiona and Simon. Fiona hasn’t shut up about things my father has said out of my earshot for twenty minutes. The past five have been Fiona ranting about a comment made about the fact of me being gay. I love that she’s amazingly supportive, but I don’t need to be reminded about my father hating first my sexuality and second my boyfriend.

Especially not when said boyfriend isn’t really comfortable with his sexuality. He’s barely comfortable holding my hand or having my hand on his back while we talk. When I tried to take the hand that wasn’t holding a champagne flute, he knocked my hand away and swapped which he had his glass in. Despite this, I felt his (temporarily) invisible tail move and wrap around my calf once then tap the inside of my ankle. He threw me a sorry smile as he did this.

“I’m going to get another drink.” He muttered, looking very surprised that his was empty when he went to take another sip. I watched Fiona nod at him and leant slightly in to where he put his hand on my forearm for a second before going, his tail leaving my leg just after him.

“I understand Malcom doesn’t like that you‘re fucking the Mages heir—“

“Fiona!” I say, aghast. She’s lost her filter.

“—but he needs to get over himself. This isn’t something he can ignore like—“ I knock her. “Like the other thing he refuses to talk about.”

“He‘ll get over it. With time.” I sigh tiredly. I turn around to look at the drinks table where Simon has supposedly gone too and see he isn’t there. Of course, I know there’s always the possibility that he’s gone off to find bunce, but he’s still being weird around Wellbelove. Even I’m not weird around her anymore. He had watched Wellbelove go inside with Bunce and the others, so I doubt that‘s where he disappeared to.

“It’s been enough time!” A woman stood beside the fountain who had been talking to a toddler looks over alarmed. Fiona drops her voice again. “It‘s been almost three years now, Baz. He’s your dad, and even though you aren’t his what he wanted in his son—“

“Thank you, Fiona.”

She frowns at me. “That isn’t what I mean. He didn’t expect his son to be a vampire, and queer, and end up in a relationship with someone he thinks is on the opposite side. He still loves you.”

“You don’t believe Simon is on the opposite side?” I raise one eyebrow, stepping a hair closer and dropping my voice again.

“I love my sister, but even I have to agree she wasn’t always right. I don’t agree with everything that bloke of yours has to say, but I definitely don’t disagree with a lot of it.” As she spoke she was looking around as if to check no one was listening in on what she said. Crowley, the old families would have a field day if they knew another one of their own was leaning towards the more modern views. By another, I mean that I was the first. Not once have I actually voiced a political opinion to anyone that isn’t Fiona but Bunce, who swore not to say a word. Especially with what she said to me. But when it became somewhat common knowledge that Simon and I were together my views were assumed.

“Of course.” I reply, because I’ve somewhat forgotten what she’d said. Also, where in hell is Simon? He’s definitely not near the drinks table, nor had he gone inside because the doors had remained shut. Even if I hadn’t been watching them, Fiona and I were stood in line with them and would have noticed if they’d been opened. Light would flood over us.

“The old families hate him. You should have heard what—“

“I need to go and find Simon.” I say quietly, but she cut off anyway. “He’s been a few minutes and he tends to...” I trail off, looking around again.

“You called him Simon.” When I turn to Fiona she has a dopey grin on her face. Someone needs to take her drink away. Not me, but someone.

”Crowley, you’re drunk.” I don’t know how I didn’t realise. “I always forget that you talk about politics and peoples opinions when you’re drunk. I’m going to find my boyfriend.” She nodded him off then walked over to the old woman who had looked over at us a moment earlier. Fiona was immediately pulled into a taught hug and I was very glad I wasn’t her. It takes until I pass my father and daphne for the smell of her perfume to finally fade out.

The only other person who I can smell like that is Simon now that he doesn’t rely on Watford body wash. He’s recently discovered a certain cologne that I’d noticed before he’d knocked on the doors of my fathers house. I suspect Wellbelove’s parents bought him it for Christmas, as he hadn’t been wearing it Christmas Eve, but had boxing day. However awful it is at certain moments, right now it will be much easier to find Simon. I can smell him from a mile off.

I walk past Dev and Niall who were leaning on the wall of my house, talking to each other in hushed voices and leaning very close together. Both wave at me merrily, but i watch them step back from each other as they do so. A sigh escapes me, but I keep walking. Simon can’t have gone too far. Unless he’s decided to fly, and I don’t think he would do that to me. Especially not after he heard Fiona say my father made a comment about him flying when mordelia was around. She’d asked when she would get her wings and had a tantrum when he told her she wouldn’t. Mordelia is better than my other three siblings. She had past the loudest phase of her adolescence and thankfully not woken me up by screaming in four years. On top of that, she actually likes me. The others do not.

As I turn at the corner of the garden, I smell Simon. Or his cologne. It doesn’t matter, I’ve nearly reached him. As the smell gets stronger, I hear the sound of his steady breathing. Then I see his silhouette sat on a bench, facing the small pond at the bottom of my families garden. Simon’s wings have appeared and his tail is resting limply over the opposite side of the bench to the side he is sitting on.

It’s not until I sit down beside him that I speak. First I walked around the bench, lifted his tail, and dropped it back down but on my lap rather than the bench. Simon shifts his gaze to me, and a weak smile fills his face. His tail wraps around my self forearm as he does this.

“Ran out on us there, Snow. You missed out on drunk Fiona praising your opinions.” My right hand strokes over his tail where it is on my arm. And Simon shuffles slightly closer. The proximity is already warming me up, and we’re half a foot away, only touching where my arm and his tail are.

“Sat through all the bitching about your dad.” He mutters. The fact that he doesn’t move away tells me he’s not upset with me. Maybe Fiona. Or my father. I can’t tell.

“I’m sorry.” I take his hand where it sits on his lap. He squeezes it. “She can be a little inconsiderate.”

“I like her.” What? This wasnt how I expected it to go. I expected I’d find him somewhere, irritated by my rich and rather conservative family, wanting to go home. He liked Fiona? He’s shifting closer to me again. “I like her, I’m just weird. Like, since the mage... and Ebb... it’s weird. Ebb was my friend but she was kind of like a mother or weird aunt. The Mage was my father figure. Not a good one, but I loved him. Then it turned out he was doing all these awful things. Half of them were to me and I didn’t even notice.”

“Snow.” My voice sounds strained when I speak and he’s turned his head to me, blue eyes looking bright despite the dark because of my somewhat immunity to it. His curls are getting longer now, falling into his eyes and around his ears. “It’s not your fault, Snow.”

“I know.” Simon drops his head on to my shoulder after those words, then continues. “It’s just weird to hear people acting like they hate their parents when I’ve never had any proper ones. Now the closest things I did have are dead. It’s weirder.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I never really feel things like that when people complain about their mothers. People don’t tend to complain about their mothers around me. Dev and Niall have long since learnt what sends me to have a minor breakdown and I don’t spend enough time with anyone else my age to notice.

“It’s fine.” He presses his forehead to my neck, his hair stopping our skin from touching. It feels different to how it usually does because I convinced him to use a little bit of gel to style his hair. It didn’t hold, I’d finished moving it around then watched it flop immediately back to his forehead. “I miss them. One of them wasn’t a good person, the other was one of the best, but I miss them both. Y’know?” It’s odd that he said anything because I didn’t even reply. Simon waits for me to answer. He waits for everyone to answer. I think perhaps he didn’t expect one this time.

“I know.” I don’t. Or maybe I do. Either way, I understand what he means, even if I don’t know the feeling. It doesn’t matter, because right now he needs comfort and I’ll give him that. I kiss him on the top of the head. A few stray curls poke my nose and it makes me want to sneeze but I don’t. One of Simon’s wings has come to rest around me and I didn’t notice when, but it’s come to rest beside my knee. The other wing is stretched out and resting almost limply on the bench. His tail is still wrapped around my arm.

“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” He barely breathes the words yet they sound like waves crashing against the cliff. The wind had dropped and trees stopped their creaking as if to hear him say the words. My grip on his hand tightens a little and I lean into him further. I could feel my heart shatter at the same time I could hear the words.

I want to tell him that I don’t want him to feel this way either, but I think that would be almost selfish. Simon would change himself for someone else in a heartbeat. Even Trixie the Pixie and Gareth with that damn belt buckle. If I said it he’d do everything he could to make it seem like he was perfectly okay and then everything would be so much worse. Right now I can hold him and he can grieve. He’s telling me when somethings wrong, as long as I make it apparent he can.

It’s the biggest thing me and bunce have managed to work out in the year since Simon’s magic evaporated. If we’re vulnerable and don’t let him push us away, he won’t. His magickal therapist has spoken to him about talking to his friends as well as her. Simon telling me she’d said that was a big part of carrying out her suggestions. He isn’t good with emotion. Nor am I, really, but we’re getting better. In a year we’ve gotten better. There’s still so much left that’s out in the open and unresolved though.

We haven’t spoken about The Humdrum, not really. And we haven’t spoken about the Mage in depth; what he would try and train Simon to do. We’ve talked about Ebb, but only because she’s the only uncomplicated death. She was his friend, and he’d lost her, and it hurt. Fiona has talked to Simon about Ebb too. Told him things he didn’t know that made him laugh or cry or both. It had been a good thing for them, and Baz too. He needed someone in his family to like his boyfriend, and Fiona adored him. I hadn’t known until Simon said that he even liked my aunt.

“I wish I didn’t feel like this too.” I reply. It’s minutes later. I wish I wasn’t confused and angry. But I am and what I need is time. For that I need patience. And that is quickly wearing thin. I wish we could skip through all the hurt and distance and get to where we’re living in a flat together and wake up every day in the same bed, light coming in through the blinds. To wherewe are properly invested in university. Or even just to where we can talk about further than a week or two away.

That won’t happen.

For now what will happen is we will hold each other’s hands, but not around lots of people. We will sit in the dark with the silence, the absence of sound holding our bubble. We will talk to each other about what we can and give time to what we can’t. We will allow time to heal because it will. Patience may be wearing thin but I will hold out until the world reaches a point where we’re all okay. I’d say again but I can’t remember a point where either of us have been.

“It isn’t forever.” Simon says the words so gently. The air from them brushes me neck.

“No.” I agree. “It isn’t.” I hope we are.

**Author's Note:**

> I have not written in first person in over a year so this was strange and I accidentally changed to third person multiple times. The tense is also a little weird at certain points so I’m sorry for that.


End file.
